Pantheon

Chapter Thirty-eight

London

He straightened the cloth across the small dining table one more time, cocking his head to check that it was right. Of course it was and of course it did not matter if it wasn’t. Yet Taylor Hastings could not help himself. He was as nervous about this meeting as any in his entire life.

And yet the nervousness was three parts excitement to one part anxiety. He believed this would be, to quote that bombastic blusterer who was now Britain’s prime minister, his ‘finest hour’. He had done what all great men do: seized his opportunity and bent history to his will. His act of heroism would be secret now, but one day it would be recorded in the annals of human events. There, etched in brightest gold, would be his own name: Taylor Hastings, saviour of the European race.

He went back into the bedroom. The suitcase in the closet was still sealed firmly shut, as he had known it would be. But even so, he was filled with doubt once more: what if the envelope was not inside? He had checked it before, twice if not three times, but what if he had moved it absent-mindedly and failed to replace it? He knew consciously that no such thing had happened, but once the question had been raised he could not ignore it. So he unlocked the closet once more, turned the key in the suitcase, opened it and reached under the two carefully-placed blankets until he felt the reassuring roughness of the manila envelope. Then he put the blankets back as they were, closed and locked the case, closed and locked the closet, and reassured himself it was safe — until the doubts returned and the whole cycle started again.

He moved towards the window. Not too close: he didn’t want to be seen. Or rather he didn’t want to be seen looking. What faster way to attract surveillance than to look as if he feared surveillance? From this spot in the middle of the room he could see the other side of the street. The trees were bare. There were few cars; Sunday afternoon traffic was barely a trickle around here. As for passers-by, he could see governesses out with children, those Norland nannies in their oatmeal coats, felt hats and white gloves; the odd courting couple — but no men on their own, no one looking upward to this second floor apartment, no one he suspected of spying on him. He wondered, yet again, if they should have met in the park or in a cafe. But the idea of carrying that envelope, those papers, out into broad daylight…

He wished, for the tenth time that day, they had made this appointment for nine o’clock this morning rather than for afternoon tea. But Reginald Rawls Murray had insisted that he and Anna were ‘in the country’ this weekend and could not get to London before four. ‘Any earlier and it will look distinctly fishy, old boy. Let’s not give Churchill’s squealers anything to go on, no break in the routine and all that.’

Taylor had deferred to the older man’s wisdom, unaware then of how slowly the Sunday hours would pass.

He was about to have another peek out of the window when at long last there was the knock on the door: three quick taps followed by a pause and then a single tap, as agreed. Taylor Hastings breathed in deeply and, with pride as well as apprehension, ushered into his modest digs the man who was simultaneously a Conservative MP, animating spirit of the Right Club and one of England’s leading advocates of a peaceful settlement with Nazi Germany.

Murray kept the pleasantries short. He eyed the table, set for tea, and with a purse of his lips and barely perceptible shake of his head signalled that there would be no such time-wasting today. Instead, his coat still on, he said, ‘Let’s get on with it.’

Taylor tried to hide his disappointment. He was young and Murray was a busy man, he knew that. But he was about to hand over the Rosetta Stone and Holy Grail rolled into one; surely he deserved a bit of respect, if not outright praise and deference? Instead, he was being treated as if he were no more than the boy at a left luggage counter, his duty to hand over a stored parcel. He slipped into the bedroom with his head down.

There he performed the same drill he had already repeated four times that day, returning with the manila envelope he had removed from the cipher room of the United States Embassy just a few days earlier. As he walked back into the living room, he found Murray standing there tapping his foot, gazing at the ceiling, and he decided in that instant to assert his own power. After all, it was he, Taylor Hastings, who held the cards. The moment would not last long, but for now he would enjoy it.

‘Take a seat,’ he said, gesturing towards one of the armchairs.

For a moment, Murray hesitated, displeasure drawing down the corners of his mouth. Then he removed his coat and did as he was told.

‘What we have here, sir,’ Taylor began, still holding tight to the envelope, ‘is a series of top secret cables between-’ He lowered his voice to a whisper, ‘President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a “Former Naval Person”.’

Murray’s brow creased, just as Taylor had known it would. He was milking the moment, but what the hell. ‘“Former Naval Person” is the secret codename of-’ He paused, letting the MP hang on his words, then dropped the volume another notch. ‘Winston Spencer Churchill.’

‘Good God,’ said Murray, his hand covering his mouth in an involuntary gesture of genuine shock.

There was something else in that movement too, though it took Taylor Hastings a second or two to work it out. It was indignation. Reginald Rawls Murray, for all his anti-war, anti-Churchill rantings, was indignant that a foreigner, a Yank, should have stolen the private papers of a British prime minister. It offended his patriotic sense of propriety. But, the younger man noted, that reaction did not last long. Murray reached out to take the envelope.

Taylor pulled his hand back, ensuring the documents were out of reach. ‘Good God is right. God has been very good to us, Mr Murray. It turns out that these two men, who for ease we’ll call R and C, have been corresponding for some time, long before C reached the top, as it were. The papers I have in my hand would cause great discomfort for R if they were to become public, especially now, with the election looming.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘But there is one letter that I think will prove decisive. I’ll let you read them for yourself.’ He removed the documents, representing six exchanges of messages between the two leaders, from the envelope, and gave them to the MP who took them with a hand that was, Hastings was delighted to see, trembling. At this angle, he could read along with Murray, though he all but knew the texts by heart. London May 15th 1940, 6pm Most Secret and Personal. President Roosevelt from Former Naval Person Although I have changed my office, I am sure you would not wish me to discontinue our intimate, private correspondence. As you are no doubt aware, the scene has darkened swiftly…

Hastings watched as Murray’s eyes scanned along the page, his thumb indicating where he stopped next: If necessary, we shall continue the war alone and we are not afraid of that. But I trust you realize, Mr President, that the voice and force of the United States may count for nothing if they are withheld too long…

That got Murray excited. As expected, the Englishman turned the page, looking for Roosevelt’s reply to this direct appeal for US intervention. If the President bowed to Churchill’s plea, if he had secretly promised to deploy ‘the force of the United States’, then Roosevelt would be finished, his re-election in November doomed. He had repeatedly sworn before the American people that no such decision had been taken, that the US was still officially neutral. But if it could be proven that Roosevelt had, in fact, clandestinely committed the US to Britain’s defence, he would be exposed as a warmonger and, worse, a liar — ready to trick his own nation into a global and potentially disastrous conflict.

Murray was skimming the President’s reply, all of it exasperatingly non-committal. Taylor knew what the older man was looking for; he had been looking for just the same thing himself when he had first held these papers in his own grasp, his hands clammy with excitement. He wondered if he should put the Englishman out of his misery, but decided against it. He had worked hard for this moment; he had every right to savour it.

He let his guest turn over another sheet, so that Murray was now reading Churchill’s cable to Roosevelt of May 20, 1940, despatched at one pm, his eyes darting across the page at double speed. Taylor particularly liked this one: Excuse me, Mr President, putting this nightmare bluntly. Evidently I could not answer for my successors who in utter despair and helplessness might well have to accommodate themselves to the German will…

Taylor hoped the meaning of that passage had sunk in. Here was the British prime minister warning that, if no American military help was forthcoming, then his own administration would collapse and a pro-German regime would take its place. Wasn’t that proof, from the horse’s mouth, that he, Taylor Hastings, was about to make all the Right Club’s dreams come true? Once Roosevelt was discredited and ejected from office, the US would stay out of the war and Britain would either be defeated or make its peace with Germany: Churchill himself was saying it! Hitler would be master of all Europe, with only the Atlantic — no longer defended by Churchill’s precious Royal Navy — standing between the Third Reich and America. A new world was about to be born and he, young as he was, would be remembered as one of its fathers…

He could see a line of worry etched into Murray’s forehead. That did not surprise, still less concern, Hastings. He understood. The Englishman had only read Churchill’s increasingly urgent pleas; from Roosevelt, he had only seen a series of fence-sitting replies. The MP was fretting that these documents did not, after all, contain the lethal words that would unseat an American president and prepare the way for a new order in Europe and beyond.

He decided to employ a technique learned from Anna, Murray’s wife and his lover. She always knew when a striptease had gone on long enough. It was time to remove the last veil and show the man what he was aching to see.

‘June 13,’ he said steadily. ‘Turn to R’s letter from June 13, 1940. One pm.’

Murray’s fingers were shaking in their haste to turn over one sheet and then another.

As at last he began reading, Taylor’s eye accompanied him over each word, the pleasure of it now even greater than the first time he had read it. Your message of June 10 has moved me very deeply… this Government is doing everything in its power to make available to the Allied Governments the material they so urgently require, and our efforts to do still more are being redoubled. This is because of our faith in and our support of the ideals for which the Allies are fighting.

It began at the corners of his mouth, spreading slowly as if this were a delight not to be rushed. Reginald Rawls Murray read the words again, then sat back in his chair, at first relieved, then steadily — as the meaning sank in — elated. Colour was spreading across his face, brightening by the second.

‘It’s not one hundred per cent definitive,’ Taylor said, ‘but-’

‘But it’s as close as makes no difference,’ Murray said. ‘If even one sentence of this were to become known on Capitol Hill. I mean, “our faith in and our support of the Allies”. What’s that, if not a commitment?’

‘That’s not exactly what he said, Mr Murray. The full quote is actually-’

‘Oh, don’t you worry about that, young man. This is politics, not diplomacy. He’s talked about “faith and support”, that’s what matters. No one cares about the small print. And look at this.’ The MP, his cheeks now filled with a ruddy flush that extended to his ears, rapped the paper in front of him. ‘“Our efforts to do still more are being redoubled”. Well, what the hell does that mean except war? He admits he’s doing everything else already, supplying materials and what have you. “To do still more.” It can only mean one thing. No, I’m afraid your Mr Rosenfeld has hanged himself with his own rope here.’

‘Not my Mr Rosenfeld, Mr Murray. I never voted for him.’

‘Of course not. Not yours and not America’s, if the truth be told. He works for the Jews, like they all do.’

The MP got to his feet and reached for his lightweight summer coat, which he had left on the couch — the same couch, Hastings reflected, where he had been thrusting like a locomotive piston into Mrs Rawls Murray not a week earlier. The older man extended his hand. ‘You may never get any recognition for what you have done, Mr Hastings. Your name may never be known. But people of good blood will always owe you a debt. On their behalf, I thank you.’

Taylor accepted the handshake and nodded gravely, the star pupil on prize day. He knew he should have left it like that, saying nothing more than bidding farewell. But between curiosity and decorum, curiosity was the stronger. ‘What will you do with it?’ he asked.

‘I shall put it into the hands of those who will make best use of it. And I shall do it tonight.’